Thursday, August 19, 2010

It's the Only Proper Initiation

My husband was a bubble boy when he was an infant/toddler and since then his immune system has been, well, non-existent. The same can be the same for my eldest son. Within his first year of life, he was hospitalized twice and let me tell you that Children's Hospital in Seattle is not known for their food for a reason. Not to mention we also had to visit the emergency room with him not even 12 hours after we were discharged from the hospital after giving birth.

The day started with us running late to Andrew's 3 day old appointment and I hate being late. Ryan and I were not on the same page as Ryan thought we should keep Tyler at home while I was all about taking advantage of us paying for daycare and therefore we should have dropped him off. So we were off to Ballard since that is where Tyler and Andrew's pediatrician is. It really doesn't make sense anymore since there are about 200 pediatricians between Ballard and where we live but we are still not ready to part with their pediatrician.

The appointment was at 10:10am and as always we hit the morning traffic into downtown Seattle however we were only a little less than 10 minutes late for Andrew's appointment. All his vitals seemed fine and he looked healthy regardless if he did weigh 7 pounds and 1.5 ounces. Luckily that was a weight gain from the previous day where he weighed 7 pounds even at our postpartum checkup. Phew, we dodged one bullet. So Andrew's height and weight was in the 50th percentile with his head size being in the 15th percentile. Once again, complete opposite of his older brother considering Tyler's height and weight was in the 15th percentile with only his head size being average. I guess you can't win them all.

Andrew seemed healthy witht he exception of the pediatrician seeing lessions in the back of his throat. Another pediatrician in the practice also took a look into Andrew's throat and also saw these so called lessions. Since they commonly see this as a virus in older kids they wanted to be safe than sorry, and so we were off to the ER at Children's hospital.

Fortunately, we can still count on one hand how many times we have had to leave the doctor's office and head straight to Children's hospital (sad, but true). There was definitely a tension in the car ride all the way through the U-district and it definitely got more awkward when we had to take the detour since the 45th street viaduct was still under construction. The detour took us to Montlake Boulevard which is one road that never sleeps. I was still upset that we had not dropped off Tyler at daycare and so now Ryan ended up having to drop off Andrew and myself while he drove all the way back to Bellevue to drop Tyler off at daycare.

By the time we got settled into a room at the ER it was almost 11:30am and by then Andrew was starving. Literally starving and my milk had come in that morning. Starving infant plus my body wanting to explode...I was not in a good mood. The nurses and doctors wouldn't let me nurse Andrew until they had all the leeds hooked up to him and they were getting consistent vitals. Can you imagine a blood pressure cuff small enough for a 3-day old? They don't exist and when an infant is hungry they are definitely not going to cooperate. After 30 minutes of struggling they were able to get consistent vitals but now all of Andrew's vitals were low and they deemed him "lethargic" and considered having to hook him up to an IV. Well shit (pardon my French) but this kid hasn't eaten in 4 hours now, of course he's lethargic, he's hungry and tired of fighting you guys in just his diaper.

I am unsure of how I finally convinced them to let me nurse him, maybe it was the nurse that was pro-bono nursing that convinced the nazi-like nurse practicioner that essentially grilled me to see if we were abusing our 3 day old. I know it's protocol at Children's to see the living conditions of each kid that comes in to make sure they are not getting abused, but I can assure you I am not one to abuse a kid if I am trying to feed him. Sheesh, so finally at 12:15am Andrew was able to get his morning feedings that he had missed and his lunch. The nurse was also kind enough to get me a pump to relieve myself of the pressure, God bless her.

Long story short, it took a team of 2 doctors (1 ER, 1 dermatologist), 2 interns, 1 nurse practioner, and 3 nurses to determine that Andrew has a "red rash" and none of them saw what the two pediatricians saw in his throat. Needless to say, the two interns not only did not know where the supplies where they also did not know how to get Andrew to open his mouth. Ryan was pissed, and neither one of us really had confidence in the team's conclusions. Now we just wait for that ER co-pay bill.